Latest / Pastor John Piper's answers / Should Christians Make Bucket Lists?
Transcript
- Well, we live in a culture that talks a lot about bucket lists, doing things, experiencing things, achieving things before the clock of life runs out. Mainly it's used to talk about travel plans, places to see, places to go. So what about Christians talking about bucket lists. That's a question from a listener named Christine Pastor John Hello to you, recently wrote this on Twitter. Quote retirees pack in their bucket list quick before they die. As if there is no glorious resurrection, no new Earth, no wonders of the new world, no presence of Christ to sweeten every venture and eternity. It is a very strange way for Christians to act in a world of desperate need. End quote. Wow, that's pointed. I feel this pressure as a twenty year old woman too. All my friends have bucket lists as well, for places to see and travel before they get married and have kids. I'll admit I'm tempted here too to get all my adventuring in now. It's not just a retiree temptation. Can you further unpack this point for me? It seems tied to your themes of not wasting our lives and of anti retirement. But how do you balance this eternal hope for the next life while taking and enjoying vacations with your family in this life. So let me clarify at the outset that yes, I am on a little crusade to motivate Christians over the age of sixty five and those who are planning to be over the age of sixty five someday not to waste their remaining healthy lives in bondage to the worldly mindset that earthly adventures are to be packed into our final years, as though on the other side of death just few years away. The adventures with Jesus will not be a thousand times better and will probably be enhanced if we spend our final healthy years here serving other people rather than chasing earthly excitements. I don't know how you can read and believe the Bible and look at this pervasively broken, suffering world, lost world and think otherwise. I really don't. Baby Boomers my generation, I'm the oldest baby boomer with eleven days short January eleven, nineteen forty six. Baby Boomers own half of the nation's one one hundred fifty six trillion dollars in assets, seventy five million American boomers are expected to be retiring or to have retired seven years from now. All of us more or less retired by twenty thirty. About twenty eight percent of those seventy five million boomers call themselves evangelical Christians. That's about twenty one million people. If we had the will, we could finish the Great Commission before we were off the scene, both by hundreds of thousands of us going and by billions of dollars being given to send others to the least reached peoples of the world. So maybe you can see why I am on a crusade to say to Christians, don't waste your final two decades chasing earthly excitements when excitements a thousand times better await you just over the horizon of this life. That would be like a person on the way to inherit a million dollars spending the last mile picking up shiny pennies. Seems to me that it would make a lot more sense to spend the last mile emptying your pockets for lost and needy people. Now I know Christine did not ask me about what I've just talked about, namely, retiree. She asked me about twenty somethings who have bucket lists of adventures to pack in before they get married. And then, more generally, she asks about the relationship between eternal hope and family vacations. The reason I have spent half my time now talking about the final twenty years of life is because I think if I could win over some of the Christian twenty somethings in this way of thinking about the future decades, then it would inevitably have a powerful impact on their present decade. It would What reason people waste the last decades of their lives is because the world has taught them to for the previous sixty years, including their twenties. So I would say the same thing about world trotting globe trotting at age twenty five as I do at age sixty five. Is the mindset governing this way of life a biblical mindset? That's the question. Is it a biblical mindset? That's a different question than whether it's right to take a family vacation or whether it's right to buy a urial pass and spend the summer after college visiting every country in Europe. Both of those decisions may be right. The question is what's your mindset? Is it biblical that That's a different question. Because we cannot spend every hour of every day, or every day of every year in focused, productive, valid work, whether in Christian ministry or some other vocation, it is biblical and wise to build respite rest from work into our lives, both for the sake of recreation and for the sake of legitimate enjoyments of God's world. Those two impulses are very different than a worldly mindset that is oblivious to the needs of the world, oblivious to the shortness of life, the joys of service, and the preciousness of the glory of Christ. Not only is respite from work wise and biblical, so that vacations days off are totally legitimate, but the adventures themselves that you might do during those times when you're not working. The adventures themselves need not be merely self gratifying. For radically christ exalting Christians, adventures, whether in your twenties or seventies, won't be conceived merely as checking off earthly excitements before you marry or before you die. They will be conceived these adventures will be conceived as adventures with God on the lookout for His handiwork his glory. Eager to build experiences into our lives for greater usefulness in Christ's cause. Eager to approach every amazement worshipfully. Eager to cross paths with people providentially placed there for you to bless. So my main desire for twenty somethings and seventy somethings is that they think like the Bible and not like the world. That they think God's thoughts more than man's thoughts. That they look at the world through a biblical lens, which would include at least these seven perspectives that I'll just name. One, God has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son. Two. Therefore we're sojourners and exiles here. This earth is not our home. Our citizenship is in Heaven. So Calautionans one thirteen for the first point for the bench three twenty for the second point. Three life is a vapor with many troubles here, and eternity is endless with no trouble There only joy James four fourteen ps. I'm sixteen eleven number four. We are called to have a healthy heavenly mindset, having our priorities and desires shaped by things that are above, things that are unseen, things that are eternal two Corinthians four eighteen. Number five. To live is Christ, and to die's gain far more gain than anything obtained on earth. Philippians one twenty one. Death is not a threat to happiness. You don't need to squeeze happiness happiness in here because death is coming. That's ridiculous, I mean ridiculous. Death is not a threat to happiness. It's the door to happiness. It's not the end of your bucket list. It's the beginning, right. Come on, we're Christian's six Many people are lost and broken and more important to help than place. This is our to visit Galatian sixteen. And finally number seven, life exists, old and young. Life exists for the sake of Christ, to make him look supremely valuable Philippians one twenty Only one life tw will soon be passed. Only what's done for Christ will last. So I think if we embrace these seven biblical perspectives, God will show us how to use our earthly early and later years. Yeah, Amen, think bestor John, don't waste your final two decades chasing earthly excitements, when excitements a thousand times better await you just over the horizon of this life. That would be like a person on the way to inherit a million dollars spending the last mile picking up shiny pennies. Seems to me that it would make a lot more sense to spend the last mile emptying your pockets for lost and needy people. What a picture. That's sobering. And if you haven't read Pastor John's classic bestseller, Don't Waste Your Life, I highly commend it well. Speaking of hot topics, this summer, Pastor John tweeted an open question should we be sipping coffee on the sanctuary? That tweet you got one thousand retweets, fifteen hundred comments, three thousand likes, two point seven million views, and generated feature articles online from Fox News here in the States and The Daily Mail in the UK. And for the next three episodes, we're going to process that lightning Rod tweet and what it means for the church today. I'm your host, Tony Ranky. We'll see you on Monday.